MAY 13, 2005

THE CASE AGAINST A NATIONAL ID CARD

The Founding Fathers couldn't have foreseen the technological developments we have the 21st century. They didn't know about the Internet, about computers, about data bases, satellites, cameras everywhere. But I think they would be appalled at the disappearance of privacy we've seen as a result of technology and as a result of government intrusion into our lives. It's isn't enough that cameras are mounted in almost any store you enter now, or at ATM's, or that you have to supply your Social Security number constantly, or that GPS technology can reveal you whereabouts at any given time. The national ID card that will result from this law is a one stop, one shop location for people to get all kinds of personal information about us. Bruce Schneier, a technology specialist, presents the case against the national ID card in this article at www.alternet.org:

It won't work. It won't make us more secure.

In fact, everything I've learned about security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure.

My argument may not be obvious, but it's not hard to follow, either. It centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails.

RELIGION AND COMPASSION OFTEN NOT SYNONYMOUS

Since Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are in violent competition around the world, I thought it would be interesting to delve into Karen Armstrong's fascinating book A History of God. A statement that struck me was on page 46. Ms. Armstrong is discussing the prophet Amos and his call for compassion. She observes, "Not surprisingly, most Israelites declined the prophet's invitation to enter into a dialogue with Yahweh. They preferred a less demanding religion of cultic observance either in the Jerusalem Temple or in the old fertility cult of Canaan. This continues to be the case: the religion of compassion is followed only by a minority; most religious people are content with decorous worship in synagogue, church, temple and mosque."

LOONY ARGUMENT FROM PAT BUCHANAN

What's scary about this is that Pat Buchanan seems to the mainstream of the Republican party now, not just on the lunatic fringe. Buchanan made the argument that World War II "wasn't worth the effort." He is echoing George W. Bush, who criticized FDR a few days ago. Buchanan also omitted the fact the Nazis were systematically murdering millions of people. This item by Andrew Metz comes from www.newsday.com:

Was World War II worth it?

In the inflammatory world view of Pat Buchanan, the short answer is no. The war that stopped the Nazis' global campaign and the mechanistic extermination of European Jewry was actually not worth the effort.

The commentator yesterday offered equally provocative answers to other questions: Why destroy Hitler? And why venerate FDR and Churchill?

On the radio and Internet, Buchanan framed his positions as amplification of remarks made over the weekend by President George W. Bush that the pact ending the war brought on a Stalinist domination that was "one of the greatest wrongs of history."

LIMBAUGH MAKES JACKASS OF HIMSELF AGAIN

Rush Limbaugh thinks he's so brilliant he can trash Nobel Prize winners like former president Jimmy Carter. There was a story saying that Nobel Prize winners would have problems investing under the kind of plan trotted out by George W. Bush to replace Social Security, so naturally Limbaugh attacks the Nobel Prize and its winners. This guy has done more than his fair share to damage political discourse and democracy in this country. One hopes that he will be tried and convicted on his hillbilly heroin use. This item is from www.mediamatters.org:

After reading from a May 11 Los Angeles Times article that demonstrated how Nobel Prize-winning economists have "fumble[d] the sorts of decisions Bush's Social Security overhaul plan would ask average Americans to make," nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh declared that Nobel Prize winners are "clowns" and "egghead elitists who can't even button their shirts." Limbaugh also noted that former President "Jimmy Carter is a Nobel Prize winner, too" and claimed: "If that doesn't bring disgrace upon the whole Nobel committee, I don't know what does."

MAY 12, 2005

BUSH IS NO HERO

People who see George W. Bush as a hero must see something I don't see. I see a guy who has managed to skate through his entire life without being held accountable for much of anything. He was born rich, which he couldn't control, of course. But, unlike people like FDR and JFK, George hasn't used his favorable circumstances to better the world. He has used it has an excuse to rip off people, to develop an incredible arrogance and self-centeredness, and now to claim he's God's chosen one on earth. He's really just a psychopathic, cowardly little man who probably couldn't manage a 7-11 in the real world. Gene Lyons has some thoughts in this column:

To quote our president: "Bring it on." It’s always astonishing to observe the logical contortions of people determined to see greatness in this paradoxically smug, frightened little man. Here’s a guy who can’t face a "town hall" meeting on Social Security without a screened audience, scripted questions and the Secret Service escorting suspected Democrats to the exits, and he’s a hero?

UNITED STABS ITS EMPLOYEES IN THE BACK

A commitment from big business isn't really a commitment at all. Nowadays when the rules aren't convenient for big business they just change the rules. For example, you get a credit card with a fixed rate of 7.99%, but that's not convenient for the credit card company, so they change the rules so you have a variable rate, or some much higher rate than you agreed to. United Airlines had a pension plan with its employees, but now United wants to renege on its agreement. And the government is allowing it to happen. This story by David R. Baker is at www.sfgate.com:

Many United Airlines employees and retirees view the company's pension-cutting plan, approved by a Bankruptcy Court judge Tuesday, as a kind of betrayal.

They spent years -- in many cases, decades -- working for the airline. Some had parents at the company or children who followed them there, drawn by its generous benefits and apparent stability.

RADANOVICH STRIKES AGAIN

You've probably heard about something called the Real ID Act. This is another unfunded mandate by the federal government to the states requiring what is in reality a national ID card in the form of a driver's license. Under this law the states will have to require that you present four forms of ID to get or renew your driver's license. This is going to clog already long DMV lines, dump more costs on to states that are already overburdened and in deficit, and presents a grave danger by collecting data about each and every one of us into a federal data base. It also increases the likelihood of ID theft should information fall into the wrong hands. And this is directed primarily at Mexican immigrants, people who haven't been linked to terrorism in any way that I know of.

I was informed today--surprise!--that our right-wing Congressman George Radanovich fully backed this repressive law. I guess Mr. Radanovich forgot that the terrorists on 9/11 were mostly Saudis who were in this country legally. Republicans like to pass repressive laws that violate the privacy of all of us in the name of "security." It's like throwing the baby out with the bath water. I also condemn the Democrats who voted for this despicable law, but it's Republicans who are driving this consistent violation of civil liberties.

GROPER IS A HYPOCRITE

Fresno had the "privilege" of another visit from Arnold the Groper yesterday. He was hanging out with the fat cats to rake in more cash. Arnold was a big critic of former Governor Gray Davis because Davis raised so much money. But Davis looks like an amateur compared to the Groper. Lately Arnold has been running TV commercials showing him sitting at a table talking to "average folks" and saying that our budget problems came about because the legislature spends $1.10 for every $1.00 taken in, and how he, Arnold, wants to do the will of the people. Mr. Populist, indeed. I'd like to know more about Arnold's connections to Enron, the corporation that knowingly and deliberately screwed California over in a phony energy crisis a few years ago. This item about the Groper's fund raising comes from pmcarpenter.blogs.com:

The combined fundraising totals of Schwarzenegger’s administration have many Californians wondering why they held such a disdainful opinion of Gray Davis’s fundraising proclivities. In Arnold’s first year in office he raked in more than $26 million; since he first announced his candidacy he’s pulled in almost $50 million; and he has said he’s after another $50 million in 2005 alone to accomplish his factious goals, which had included such Bushian weirdness as privatizing the state employees pension plan.

Not exactly a “populist” record, as the governor is so fond of promoting his political tenure. Rather, it’s the same old bait-and-switch big-business scam that the GOP has shoved down the gullible little guy’s throat since at least the days of Ronald Reagan’s folksiness and Newt Gingrich’s Contract.

MAY 11, 2005

IDIOT BOX COMIC STRIP

I stumbled on a new comic strip I would recommend. It's called Idiot Box by an artist named Matt Bors. His strip for May 9 is a great take on the absurdity of Christian fundamentalism claiming it is "scientific." The strip can be found at www.mattbors.com.

BUSHES ARE TOXIC FOR WAGES

An article in The Financial Times reveals that real wages, wages adjusted for inflation, fell in the United States for the first time in fourteen years. The previous fall occurred during the administration of George H. W. Bush.
Why do working class people vote for Republicans? Do they like lousy wages, recessions, wars, dirty air, and all the rest? This article by Christopher Swann is at news.ft.com:

Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times.

Inflation rose 3.1 per cent in the year to March but salaries climbed just 2.4 per cent, according to the Employment Cost Index. In the final three months of 2004, real wages fell by 0.9 per cent.

The last time salaries fell this steeply was at the start of 1991, when real wages declined by 1.1 per cent.

PROGRESSIVE TAX REVOLT

You wonder how the right-wing freaks in Congress will try to subvert this. People at the state level are voting to increase taxes on the very wealthy as the federal government tries to find ways to reduce taxes on the affluent and dump them onto the rest of us. The tax cuts at the federal level have been largely responsible for the burgeoning deficits we see, and those deficits in turn are causing states to face shortfalls in critical funding for things like Medicaid and education. This article by Gar Alperovitz is at www.commondreams.org:

Even as Washington has been cutting taxes for the rich, these initiatives aim to raise them at the state level. The progressive tax revolt is the logical result of three fundamental realities:

First, the draconian Bush tax cuts have led to equally draconian federal spending cuts. Second, the pain these are causing is being felt at the state and local level as mounting educational, Medicaid, transportation, environmental and other problems. Third, at the state level there is politically often simply no other place to turn for revenues but to those at the top.

Unlike attempts to tax the suburbs, moreover, targeting the very top elite groups can put 95-98% of the electorate on one side of the line of political demarcation–and only a tiny 2-5% on the other side. As the Republican poll data in Connecticut suggest, the extremely unequal economic gains of the last decades have made targeting the highly favored few politically and ethically compelling. The top 1% of income recipients currently garner for themselves more money each year than the bottom 100 million Americans taken together.

CIVIL RIGHTS LESSONS IN DEALING WITH TERRORISM

People who are poor and oppressed will often fight back with violence, the only means at their disposal. The United States is using violence in the "war on terrorism," but a strategy of using generosity might defuse terrorism far more effectively. This article points out the harsh measures meted out to Germany after World War I led to fascism. The generosity shown after World War II led to a peaceful Germany. The same lesson can be observed in civil rights. The harsh treatment of African-Americans led to groups like the Black Panthers. Once civil rights legislation was enacted, the Black Panthers went away. This article by David Benjamin is at www.commondreams.org:

America has parallels. For example, the most fearsome group to emerge from the civil rights struggle was the Black Panthers, who brandished guns and issued terrorist manifestos (although they tended to be mostly bark and no bite). But meanwhile, the civil rights laws enacted in the Sixties, especially affirmative action, moved African Americans just far enough up the economic scale to nurture a propertied black middle class. The urge to take violent vengeance on the white establishment quietly withered. Today, the closest thing we have to the Panthers are rap stars, who -- while barking revolution in doggerel rhyme -- travel in limousines, live in McMansions and shelter their income in Caribbean tax havens. Then, we had (and feared) Elijah Muhammad, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton. Today? Snoop Dogg, Tiger Woods, and Clarence Thomas...

MAY 10, 2005

IRAQ: A RECORD OF MURDEROUS INCOMPETENCE

Everything that George W. Bush touches turns to lead. In contrast to the fictional Midas, nothing comes up gold under George W. Bush except for the very wealthy. The war in Iraq is the most obvious example. None of the scenarios laid out by the Bush administration have been fulfilled. There were no weapons of mass destruction, no ties to al-Qaeda, no ability to build nuclear weapons, no involvement in the 9/11 attack on the United States. U.S. troops were not greeted as liberators. They are seen as occupiers and they are being picked off like sitting ducks. In its greed or arrogance the administration hasn't even properly supplied the troops in Iraq. Bob Herbert writes about it at www.nytimes.com:

Amateurs and incompetents have run the war from the start, and fantasy has trumped reality at every turn. If a movie were to be made of the war, the appropriate director would be Mel Brooks. Even as the administration was listening to the likes of Curveball, it was showing the door to the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who made the mistake of speaking the plain truth to officials fluent only in self-serving gibberish.

PRIVATE CHARITIES CAN'T PICK UP THE SLACK

George W. Bush likes to promote private charities as a centerpiece of his "compassionate conservative" agenda. Supposedly, if you take away social programs from the government and turn over those functions to private charities, the private charities will pick up the slack and even do a better job than the government. Never mind that religious charities, in particular, can put pressure on people to conform to their ideas or even join the religion. The idea that giving rich people generous tax breaks would generate more money for charities is also proving false. This article by Daniel Altman is at www.nytimes.com:

Economists usually take the view that people with more money give each dollar a lower intrinsic value than do people with less. In other words, wresting a dollar from a poor person causes more pain. But perhaps that's not true. Perhaps one reason rich people have more dollars is simply that they like dollars - or the things dollars can buy - more than everyone else.

If that's true, it doesn't fit well with President Bush's tax policy. He gave the biggest breaks to the highest earners. Maybe they're not as compassionate as he'd hoped.

IT WAS SAUDIS WHO DID 9/11-- AND WE'RE MAKING IT EASIER FOR THEM?

The Bush family has had a cozy relationship with the Saudi royal family for a long time. Check out Craig Unger's book House of Bush, House of Saud for some of the interesting facts. Never mind that the most vitriolic terrorist sect is from Saudi Arabia. And never mind that the major funding for terrorism comes from Saudis. Just remember that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. Then explain why this administration has pushed something called the Real ID Act, which is just a national ID card, that will make things harder for Mexican immigrants, but they ease travel restrictions on the Saudis. This commentary by Bill Gallagher is at www.niagarafallsreporter.com:

So let's get this straight. We're going to make it harder for Mexicans to drive cabs in Los Angeles and send them packing if they're caught without a driver's license and make it easier for Saudis -- proven producers of mass murderers -- to enter the country. That's just what George W. Bush is doing. The more ignorant and oblivious the American people are, the more the Busheviks and their lies thrive.

BUSH HAS NO BUSINESS SLANDERING FDR

Right-wingers have absurdly called FDR's New Deal "socialist" because the New Deal actually put some programs in place to protect us from predatory capitalism. They've suggested, without much compelling evidence, that FDR "let" Pearl Harbor happen because he wanted to get the United States into World War II. On his latest trip, demonstrating his insufferable ego and arrogance, George W. Bush tried to blame FDR and the Yalta accord for the subsequent Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. As this column points out, it's an another of the many right-wing lies and revisionist history at its worst. This column by Jacob Heilbrunn is at www.latimes.com:

The claim that Roosevelt betrayed Eastern Europe at Yalta, and that he set the stage for 40 years of Soviet domination, is an old right-wing canard. By repeating it, and by publicly charging that the Yalta agreement was in the "unjust tradition" of Hitler's deal with Stalin, Bush was simply engaging in cheap historical revisionism. His glib comments belong to the Ann Coulter school of history.

And let's remember that the right-wingers of the time were perfectly willing to sit back and let Hitler rage across Europe. As Mr. Heilbrunn notes:

What's more, it was the isolationist right that never wanted to fight the war in the first place, which it conveniently forgot once it began attacking Democrats as being soft on communism. Nothing of course could be further from the truth. Roosevelt went on to recognize Stalin's perfidy shortly before he died, and it fell to Truman to fight the Cold War.

Roosevelt's record is no cause for shame, but Bush's comments are.

MAY 9, 2005

BUSH ENERGY POLICY: A LITANY OF STUPIDITY

If the United States had developed energy independence, we wouldn't be in this quagmire in Iraq. No matter what George W. Bush says, this war was mostly about oil and gaining access to the region with the most oil reserves in the world. We know that the petroleum age is in its twilight, not only because oil reserves are running out, but because global warming dictates that we make changes. But the Bush answer to everything is drill, drill, drill, or give tax breaks to oil companies already drowning in cash. Molly Ivins writes about it at www.creators.com:

And their genius answer to "energy independence"? Drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Look, the total oil under ANWR is 1 billion barrels less than this country uses in a year, according to Robert Bryce, the Texas journalist who specializes in energy reporting. The bill is just riddled with perversity: We continue to subsidize people who buy Hummers, but no longer grant tax rebates to those who buy hybrid cars that are more than six times as fuel efficient. This is not how you get to "energy independence." The United States hit its oil peak back in 1970 -- domestic production has been declining ever since.

CONSERVATIVES ARE SUCH A LAUGH A MINUTE

According to some right-wingers, we liberals are just too serious. You know, we talk about things like civil liberties, illegal wars, global warming, the chasm between rich and poor, and things like that. Conservatives have such a sense of humor. There's Rush Limbaugh comparing Chelsea Clinton to a dog, or telling an African-American calling to "get the bone of out of his nose." Or Ann Coulter, that paragon of wit, saying that she wished Timmy McVeigh had bombed The New York Times. James Wolcott has a look in this item at jameswolcott.com:

Let's face it, when Ann Coulter mocked Max Cleland and made her infamous Timothy McVeigh wisecrack, that was comedy gold. Jonah Goldberg, he fills the hole left by the late Chris Farley, and I think we can all agree, it's quite a hole. If there's a funnier columnist than David Brooks, I'll eat my sombrero, and when Tony Blankley does the Danny Thomas spit trick, it is to die.

And be honest, no one makes a heartier homo joke like Michael Savage, author of the new bestseller Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder.

REPUBLICANS ARE PARTY OF BIG GOVERNMENT

Whether it's invading our privacy, passing Draconian new laws against all kinds of personal behavior, or presiding over explosive deficits, it's clear the Republican party is the party of big government. The size and reach of the federal government has grown astronomically under the misadministration of George W. Bush. This article by Ryan Sager is at www.nypost.com:

THE Republican promise of smaller, less-intrusive government is getting harder and harder to believe. Especially when a more plausible plot line is unfolding every day: that the GOP has put aside the ideals of Reagan and Goldwater in order to pursue a political strategy based on big spending.

For the latest, check out a report just released by the libertarian Cato Institute that tells a striking story about just how out-of-control spending has gotten under President Bush.

DRUG COMPANIES MAKE OUT LIKE BANDITS WITH TAX BREAKS

Drug companies are doing very well thanks to some tax breaks provided by George W. Bush, it seems. Revenues that normally would be taxed at 35% are instead being taxed about 5.25% thanks to a provision in the tax code that allows foreign profits to be returned to the United States, even though the profits were generated here. We're talking about $75 billion in profits here. This article by Alex Berenson is at www.nytimes.com:

A new tax break for corporations is allowing the biggest American drug makers to return as much as $75 billion in profits from international havens to the United States while paying a fraction of the normal tax rate.

The break is part of the American Jobs Creation Act, signed into law by President Bush in October, which allows companies a one-year window to return foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25 percent tax rate, compared with the standard 35 percent rate.

THE SHIFTING RIGHT-WING RATIONALES ON SOCIAL SECURITY

I've never made $30,000 in a single year, but under George W. Bush's definition I'm "wealthy" because I make over $20,000. I remember the line from Michael Corleone in the movie The Godfather where he told someone, "Just don't insult my intelligence." The Bushies think they can play working class Americans for suckers. They just repealed the estate tax, a tax that only affects people like Paris Hilton, and portrayed anyone who didn't favor repeal of the tax as inciting "class warfare." Now the bar has been lowered to $20,000 a year. Paul Krugman's column is at www.nytimes.com:

But defenders of Mr. Bush's Social Security plan now portray benefit cuts for anyone making more than $20,000 a year, cuts that will have their biggest percentage impact on the retirement income of people making about $60,000 a year, as cuts for the wealthy.

These are people who denounced you as a class warrior if you wanted to tax Paris Hilton's inheritance. Now they say that they're brave populists, because they want to cut the income of retired office managers.

MAY 8, 2005

WAR ON THE POOR CONTINUES

The "war on terrorism" isn't proving real successful, but George W. Bush is waging a successful war on the poor in the United States. The administration casts its greedy and cynical eye on any program for the disadvantaged to help fund the endless wars and the endless tax cuts for the rich. Whether its housing assistance, health care, or food the Bush administration is ready and willing to shaft the poor. This article talks about the tradeoff the elderly poor have to make now between prescription drugs and food stamps. The article by Robert Pear is at www.nytimes.com:

Elderly people with low incomes may lose some of their food stamps if they sign up for the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Bush administration said Saturday.

When Medicare begins covering drugs in January, older Americans will spend less of their own money on drugs and will therefore have more to spend on food, reducing their need for food stamps, officials said.

CATHOLIC CHURCH NEEDS TO GET REAL ABOUT AIDS

I'm not a Catholic, but I feel justified in criticizing the Church for doctrines that are in part responsible for costing millions of lives due to AIDS. The Church has taken a hardline position against the use of condoms. The simple use of condoms could have and would do much to reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus. Nicholas Kristof writes about the issue at www.nytimes.com:

The Vatican has horribly undercut the war against AIDS in two ways. First, it has tried to prevent Catholic clinics, charities and churches from giving out condoms or encouraging their use. Second, it argues loudly that condoms don't protect against H.I.V., thus discouraging their use.

LAURA BUSH AND THE FAWNING MEDIA

Being a PERSON OF IMPORTANCE and having major media attention, and then being able to read your lines without stumbling, is apparently enough to bring great accolades from the media these days. Take the case of Laura Bush and the "comedy" routine she did at the annual White House Correspondents dinner. I thought the horse masturbation joke was tacky, at best, but what is far more obscene is the failure to acknowledge all the dead and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's far more obscene that the media aren't holding themselves accountable for acting as a watchdog of this administration and calling it on its lies. Frank Rich has some thoughts in his column at www.nytimes.com:

Mrs. Bush's act was a harmless piece of burlesque, but it paid political dividends, upstaging the ho-hum presidential news conference of two days earlier in which few of the same reporters successfully challenged administration spin on Social Security and other matters. (One notable exception: David Gregory of NBC News, whose sharply focused follow-ups pushed Mr. Bush off script and got him to disown some of the faith-based demagoguery of the Family Research Council.) Watching the Washington press not only swoon en masse for Mrs. Bush's show but also sponsor and promote it inevitably recalls its unwitting collaboration in other, far more consequential Bush pageants. From the White House's faux "town hall meetings" to the hiring of Armstrong Williams to shill for its policies in journalistic forums, this administration has been a master of erecting propagandistic virtual realities that the news media have often been either tardy or ineffectual at unmasking.

BUSH'S PEONAGE SOCIETY

When George W. Bush uses the phrase "ownership society" doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart? Hey, I've never owned anything, but now I've got a great opportunity thanks to the vision and leadership of George W. Bush. What Mr. Bush doesn't say is that he's talking ownership by the few. The rest of us won't have much of anything. That has been the pattern of American capitalism, and the problem has only gotten worse under the economic policies of Republicans. This article by John M. Joyce is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Bush is pushing the idea (BS alert!) of an "ownership society" to "reform" Social Security. He ignores these facts. By 1998 one percent of our population owned 38 percent of the national wealth. In an era of GOP dominance, 1979-2001, the income of the top 5 percent increased by 81 percent, while that of the bottom 20 percent went up by just 3 percent. Since 2001 Bush's tax policy has worsened that inequality. The Republicans apparently understand "ownership society" to mean one in which the very few own everything.

MAY 7, 2005

MILITARY SPENDING OUT OF CONTROL

When the Soviet Union fell it seemed for one brief fleeting moment that maybe we could back away from militarism. We could get rid of nuclear weapons, we could downsize the militaries around the world, and we could enjoy a "peace dividend." It hasn't worked out that way. Armed conflicts still rage around the world, nuclear weapons are proliferating, and the United States will soon spend more on the military than all other countries combined. We're sacrificing everything to worship the God of War. This story by Chris Floyd is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

American military spending will soon equal that of the rest of the world combined, Jane's Defence Weekly reports. The U.S. "defense" budget hit "$417.4 billion in 2003 - 46 percent of the global total." And we know it has only ballooned since then, with more than $81 billion in war pork for Iraq larded on just the other day.

What does this mean? It means that America has become a completely militarized state; or rather, the military IS the state now, and everything else is ancillary to it, mere excess that can be gutted or chopped off in times of "budget crisis." Bush's policies are of course designed to produce just such a crisis, in order to reduce government to a bare-bones operation, powerless to restrain the restless, relentless, all-pervading greed of the oligarchy. This is happening at every level - federal, state and local - as representative bodies are stripped of their powers to regulate business, preserve the environment, and maintain public services.

HOPEFUL SIGNS OF GOP DEMISE

I don't know if I'm as optimistic as the author of this article. But there are hopeful signs of a GOP collapse. There have been many missteps in the first 100 days of the second Bush term. The arrogant overreach in the Terri Schiavo case alienated many Americans. The blatant attempt to turn the U.S. into a theocracy has many concerned. George W. Bush's obvious lies about Social Security "reform" aren't getting much support. More evidence emerges about the phony case for war against Iraq, a war that is draining our treasury, killing our military, and destroying innocent life. So let's hope the author is right. Let's hope the GOP is like a vampire exposed to the sun, soon to disintegrate into dust. This article by David Michael Green is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Far from the mandate Bush claimed in November, the guy can't seem to do anything now. Every time he parts the smirk long enough to utter some mangled pablum about Social Security 'reform', he actually loses public and congressional support, rather than gaining it. Likewise, both he and his allies took a considerable hit on the Terri Schiavo fiasco, and are doing so again with their hysterical attacks upon the very judges their own party placed on the bench. Now Tom DeLay's deodorant has gone on strike, yet his Republican colleagues foolishly attach themselves to this drowning pol and his cement shoes of exponentially escalating scandal. Meanwhile, Bush's sinking job approval ratings are far lower than those of any president ever at 100 days into a second term. Bolton is tanking. Ethics rigging is tanking. Even the nuclear option is tanking, except in North Korea and Iran, both of which are demonstrating for the good Senator Frist how it's properly done. All this while Greenland is melting faster than gas prices are rising, and Republicans in Texas and elsewhere are suing Bush (yes, you read that right) over the No Child Left Behind albatross which he's saddled upon them. Even the Terminator has now predictably commenced his self-destruct sequence, and may ultimately count himself lucky if he can escape back to Austria before Californians string him up for those sexual predations which somehow don't seem so boyishly cute anymore.

MAY 6, 2005

BACK UP A TRUCK FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

The Bush administration has been a disaster on so many fronts it's hard to keep up. To lie about the benefits of cutting taxes for the rich, or to slash programs for the poor and middle class to pay for those tax cuts, is unconscionable. But the lie about the war in Iraq takes center stage as the most vile and crass lie from this administration. Bush's defenders have claimed that he worked with "bad intelligence" and that's why we rushed into this slaughter. Now we learn again that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were planning this war all along, no matter what the real intelligence said. Andrew Greeley has some good questions on this article at www.suntimes.com:

You can still get away with the "big lie" as long as Karl Rove and his team of spinners keep providing persuasive rationalizations. The American public is still supine, uneasy about the war, but not willing yet to turn decisively against it. Will that still be the case next year when we "celebrate" the third anniversary of the war? Is the patience of the American people that long-suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country? How many people have to die before the public realizes that American foreign policy is a tissue of lies?

PUTIN RIPS BUSH

George W. Bush likes to talk about democracy while he systematically destroys it here at home. As the old saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't fooled. Putin is asking questions about Bush the media in this country should be asking. This story is from www.cbsnews.com:

On the eve of a meeting with President Bush in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin responds to criticism of democracy in Russia, raising questions about the U.S. 2000 election and President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

In an exclusive interview to be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, Correspondent Mike Wallace relays criticism from the Bush White House about recent changes Putin has instituted in Russia. Putin tells Wallace he should question his own country's democratic ways before looking for problems with Russia's.

SUPER-RICH'S GREED

According to The Christian Science Monitor, the super rich have stashed over $11 trillion in assets in foreign accounts where the money isn't subject to taxation. So much misery in the world could be alleviated if these assets were taxed the way they should be. This item is from www.acsblog.org:

The Christian Science Monitor reports that an amount greater than the U.S. National Debt is shielded in tax shelters abroad:

Although they have only 1 percent of the world's inhabitants, they hold a quarter of United States stocks and nearly a third of all the globe's assets.


They're tax havens: 70 mostly tiny nations that offer no-tax or low-tax status to the wealthy so they can stash their money. Usually, the process is so secret that it draws little attention. But the sums - and lost tax revenues - are growing so large that the havens are getting new and unaccustomed scrutiny.

For example: When London's Tax Justice Network (TJN) reported a month ago that rich individuals worldwide had stashed $11.5 trillion of their assets in tax havens, it caused a fuss in Europe. "Super-rich hide trillions offshore," blazed a British newspaper headline.

WHERE OVERWORK HAS GOTTEN US

Being a working class person in the United States is a little like the Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to hold back the inevitable flood. Wages are stagnant or falling, jobs are getting shipped to cheaper labor markets abroad, the Bush administration is trying to destroy Social Security, the minimum wage is kept absurdly low, and more and more is expected for less and less. This item deals with a study showing that, although Americans work far longer hours than Europeans, the per capita production of Europeans is equal to ours. This item comes from www.motherjones.com:

Then there's a broader question to ask here, namely: "What price growth?" America is often lauded for its supercharged GDP, especially in comparison to some of our more welfare-heavy, vacation-loving European peers, but perhaps it's time to re-examine this assumption. For one, the usual comparisons are a bit misleading: European GDP growth per capita has been roughly the same as that in the U.S over the last decade—1.8 percent per year in the U.S., 1.7 percent in the EU15. (Indeed, if you exclude Germany, which has had a number of reunification-related problems, it becomes a very fair match.)

MAY 5, 2005

GEORGE W. BUSH HAS SECURED HIS PLACE IN HISTORY

George W. Bush may go down as the worst president in history of the United States. If we are fortunate enough to survive, some future generations will have a benchmark to compare any president to. They can look to leaders like Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and JFK for presidents who were inspirational leaders. They can look to George W. Bush as the president who arrogantly disregarded the Constitution, put the Bill of Rights in danger, started two unnecessary wars, failed to prevent the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in our history, and passed along mountains of debt so he could give tax breaks to his rich friends. Bill Gallagher writes about Bush in this column at www.niagarafallsreporter.com:

Four years of selected rule and now 100 days into his first elected term in office, George W. Bush has created so much madness it will take decades to undo and whoever succeeds him in the Oval Office will face an unimaginable mess. President 44 already is politically doomed. He will inherit a nation seriously wounded.

It's hard to recall a president who's achieved so little with so little and done so much harm. His hallmark domestic and foreign policies are cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and wage a wild, messianic war in the Middle East to impose democracy and nation-build. The results on both fronts are disastrous.

The tax cuts have created debilitating debt and fiscal insanity. Our first president with an M.B.A. should be an embarrassment to the people at Harvard who let this child of affirmative family influence gets a degree. His administration will become a case study in how to squander a surplus, borrow recklessly, destroy jobs and provide a limping economy in the process.

PROJECTED BUDGET DEFICITS ARE STAGGERING

David Broder writes about the next five years of projected budget deficits. Your eyes glaze over at the sheer magnitude of it. And you have to remember that Bush's projections are almost always wrong. Things are almost always worse than initially projected. This column by David Broder is at www.washingtonpost.com:

The sums involved are staggering; no one can fathom what $2.6 trillion in annual spending means. But there are some parts of the budget-making process you are probably unaware of that may help you assess how well the politicians in Washington are managing this vital part of their jobs.

Who wrote this budget? President Bush submitted his blueprint two months ago, and the Republican legislators stayed close to his basic design -- especially on national defense and homeland security, his top two priorities.

ANOTHER $100 MILLION MISSING IN IRAQ

Iraq has been a tremendous cash cow for some people. Defense contractors are making impressive profits. Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has done extremely well. Now it seems that $100 million is missing and can't be accounted for. It's like Enron all over again, except that Enron didn't directly kill people. This story by Matt Kelley is at www.abcnews.com:

U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq cannot properly account for nearly $100 million that was supposed to have been spent on reconstruction projects in south-central Iraq, government investigators said Wednesday.

There are indications of fraud in the use of the $96.6 million, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. A separate investigation of possible wrongdoing continues.

THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND ME

If money were no object, how do you think you would spend it after you acquired the mansions, the cars, the planes, the boats, and the trips? In this column we learn about a rich guy who bought sharks for his aquarium. Considering how many of the rich got to their lofty financial positions, maybe sharks are a fitting metaphor. This column by Joyce Marcel is at www.commondreams.org:

Ever wonder what these rich folks do with their money? Well, after the big houses, fancy vacations and diamond jewelry, they get creative. A celebrity broker I read about in the Times a few months ago built a million-dollar home on Long Island and added a $210,000 aquarium stocked with sharks.

Yes, I'll repeat that. He bought a 5,600-gallon, salt water aquarium, 22 feet long and 5 feet high, and stocked it with $50,000 worth of tropical fish and four three-foot long, black-tip reef sharks. "The sharks, however, made quick work of the fish," the Times reported, deadpan. It cost the guy $3,200 a month to service the tank and feed the sharks their prescribed diet of salmon and flounder filets.

MAY 4, 2005

IMPEACHMENT TIME: IRAQ INTELLIGENCE MANIPULATED

The evidence that Bush lied about Iraq is tumbling down like an avalanche. He wanted a war and he was going to have a war no matter what the facts were. If Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, it didn't matter. Intelligence would be massaged to say weapons of mass destruction did exist. Now we're enmeshed in a net that's tightening around us. We've spent billions, we've killed thousands of innocent people, and we've stretched our military dangerously thin. Greg Palast writes about the case for impeachment in this article at www.buzzflash.com:

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

IMPEACHMENT TIME: MAD COW COVERUP ALLEGED

Profits are very important to people in the Bush administration and to the people who support them. Profits are so important, in fact, that the administration will risk the lives and health of consumers so the beef industry can keep raking in the profits. Mad Cow disease is one of the most insidious diseases to emerge in the last few years It's caused by tainted beef and it causes a human's brain to turn into a sponge. Mad Cow has probably emerged because of the inane and loathsome feeding practices the beef industry uses to raise its cattle. This story by Steve Mitchell is at www.upi.com:

Federal investigators are looking into allegations by a former U.S. Agriculture Department inspector that the agency sought to cover up cases of mad cow disease, United Press International has learned.

Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinarian, told UPI he was questioned recently by two representatives from the USDA's Office of Inspector General who were investigating statements he made before Canada's Parliament in April.

"I told them I think there's a cover-up," said Friedlander, a 10-year veteran of the USDA who received official praise and recognition for outstanding performance during his tenure with the agency.

MAYBE REPUBLICANS NEED CIVICS LESSONS

For years I heard Republicans huff and puff about being "strict constructionists" on the Constitution. That presumes that they know what the Constitution says. You would think the concept of separation of powers wouldn't be news to them. But lately they've been stamping their feet and wailing that the Senate should rubber stamp any crass judicial nominee sent up by the Bush administration. We've heard Republicans making threats against federal judges, conducting a nation wide telecast called "Justice Sunday" that really is just another threat against the judiciary, and trying to throw out the filibuster, a Senate rule that prevents the majority from trampling the rights of the minority. Gene Lyons has some good comments at www.nwanews.com:

The reason we have three separate branches of government and two houses of Congress is to prevent narrow majorities from trampling everybody else’s rights. The judiciary isn’t supposed to be subordinate to the president and his party but independent of them. "This point is of special importance," writes constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein, "in light of the fact that many of the court’s decisions resolve conflicts between Congress and the president. A presidential monopoly on the appointment of Supreme Court justices thus threatens to unsettle the constitutional plan of checks and balances."

Moreover, the U.S. electorate remains very closely divided. While Bush eked out a close win in the 2004 election, 45 Democratic senators chosen over revolving six-year terms represent more Americans than their Republican colleagues.

ALL THE NEW WORDS WE'RE LEARNING UNDER BUSH

I never heard of "extraordinary rendition" before George W. Bush came along. It's a nice little euphemism for shipping people to other countries so they can be tortured. I didn't know about places like Tikrit or Fallujah in Iraq. I don't remember using the word "privatization" much. I learned about hanging and dimpled chads during the 2000 presidential campaign. Now there's the word "clawback," which is the amount that will deducted from any investments you make under George W. Bush's Social Security plan. After clawback occurs, you wind up worse off than under the current system. Molly Ivins writes about it at www.workingforchange.com:

Attention, all campers! "Progressive indexing" is just another word for "cutting Social Security benefits." Do not be fooled by this idiot locution. Just as sure as "extraordinary rendition" now means "shipping the guy to another country so he can be tortured," progressive indexing means cutting benefits. Got it?

In another interesting development from President Bush's news conference, if you make more than $20,000 a year, you are wealthy. That's what the president said -- "wealthy."

MAY 3, 2005

BUSH SOCIAL SECURITY PLAN CLOBBERS MIDDLE CLASS

The fact that he has lied about Social Security being in "crisis" should tell you a lot about George W. Bush's plans to attack Social Security. In the "news" conference he gave Mr. Bush talked about more specifics of his plan, which mostly involve huge cuts in benefits for almost everyone. In this editorial The New York Times looks at what is truly a rotten plan. The editorial is at www.nytimes.com:

Mr. Bush says these cuts would enable the system to continue paying benefits at the current level to the 30 percent of recipients who now make less than $20,000. But fully two-thirds of retirees rely on Social Security for more than half of their income. Moreover, the Bush plan gives the false impression that the wealthiest beneficiaries would bear the most pain. That's not the case. The wealthier one is, the lower the percentage of retirement income coming from Social Security, so even a big cut has little impact. By 2075, an average worker's benefit cut would equal 10 percent of pre-retirement income; a millionaire's reduction would be only 1 percent.

JIMMY CARTER WAS RIGHT ON CONSERVATION

We first began to experience oil shocks in the 1970's. That was when OPEC dug in its heels and started jacking up the price for a barrel of oil. We saw climbing gasoline prices, long lines, and rationing. I remember having to buy gas based on the last digit of your license plate. You bought gas on "even" or "odd" days. President Jimmy Carter encouraged people to turn down their thermostats. We had a lower speed limit of 55 m.p.h. for a time. We were making the first baby steps toward getting away from dependence on foreign oil. Then along came that "sunny optimist" Ronald Reagan, who said we should use all the energy we wanted. President Carter was cast as some kind of wimp, and Ronald Reagan the great hero. If we had listened to President Carter, we would be in far better shape today. This article by Thom Hartmann is at www.commondreams.org:

In his recent news conference, George Bush Jr. suggested that our nation's "problem" with high gasoline prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and tried to blame it all on Bill Clinton. First, Junior said, "This is a problem that's been a long time in coming. We haven't had an energy policy in this country."

This was followed by, "That's exactly what I've been saying to the American people -- 10 years ago if we'd had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And -- but we haven't done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we're in." As is so often the case, Bush was lying.

NEW POPE A MAJOR STEP BACKWARD

The gains of neoconservatives in the past decades is a lot like the Roman Empire being overrun by the barbarians. We see civilization and enlightenment threatened by an increasing and relentless darkness. It's an elevation of greed, blood lust, and superstition at the expense of science, compassion, and enlightenment. The new Pope, Benedict XVI, is the very embodiment of that rollback to a darker age. John Kelley writes about it at www.commondreams.org:

This is a 78-year-old man who claims a purity and knowledge of God and his will, but has never held a women he loves in his arms lost in passion or ever held his child in his arms right after its birth, still speckled with its mother’s blood. He also has never lost his job to an immigrant, or to “outsourcing”, or found himself with an unexpected pregnancy he can’t afford without hurting the other children because his new job with Wal-Mart makes him just enough money to deny him public assistance with food, healthcare and childcare but not enough to afford the company plan. He has never found himself, 15 and pregnant by his father or found himself with HIV because the church told him artificial contraception was a sin. He seems to have never found himself in the situation of a young trusting altar boy molested by his priest or what felt what it is like to be rejected as a homosexual.

SCIENCE TAKES AWAY HUMAN CENTRIC UNIVERSE

People who like to close their eyes and deny the reality of evolution may be afraid of not being the center of the universe. It's dispiriting to some to realize that there's not some big paternal being in the sky who created everything and puts humans on a pedestal. We're actually one species on a small planet in an undistinguished solar system in a run-of-the-mill galaxy. I don't find that so horrifying, but some do. Alexander Rose has a column at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The real reason why evolution remains controversial is that it most transparently exposes man's insignificant place in the universe. In actuality, of course, it is far from the only theory that undermines man's presumed status as the measure of all things.

Over the last few hundred years, science has taught us that Earth is just one of trillions of rocks spiraling through an expanding universe, that what separates human beings from chimpanzees is merely a couple of extra proteins in our genome and that our lofty thoughts and ambitions are no more than electrochemical signals in the brain.

MAY 2, 2005

PHILIP ROTH'S NEW NOVEL

I believe fiction is often more important in telling the truth than nonfiction. George Orwell's novels Animal Farm and 1984 were prescient in warning of the dangers of unethical manipulation of language and history. Sinclair Lewis warned of the dangers of fascism in the United States in his novel It Can't Happen Here. Jack London warned of the dangers of power being concentrated in the hands of big business in The Iron Heel. Margaret Atwood wrote about the dangers of a far right version of Christianity seizing control in her novel The Handmaid's Tale.

Now we have Philip Roth's new novel The Plot Against America talking about a fascist-controlled United States government. Roth's novel has Charles A. Lindbergh, aviation hero and fascist sympathizer, winning the presidency in 1940. So many elements of the novel seem true to life. Everyone who cares about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and justice should read this novel.

WHY CAN'T BUSH TELL THE TRUTH?

Bill Clinton got branded a serial liar by the right-wingers in this country, but none of Bill Clinton's lies approached the level achieved by George W. Bush. He seems absolutely incapable of telling the truth about anything, probably because none of his policies would get any support if the truth were told. Tax cuts for the rich would be great for the economy and wouldn't create massive deficits. Right. Social Security would be put in a lockbox. Right. He didn't have warnings that terrorists might attack inside the United States. Right. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was poised to attack the United States. Right. Social Security is in crisis and a privatized system is all that will save it. Right. Bush's Latest Big Lie about Social Security gets examined by an editorialist at www.newsday.com:

There is an essential dishonesty in Bush's message on Social Security: that, as he put it, there's a bunch of IOUs in Washington filing cabinets that will not be redeemed. That is, the government won't make good on its promise to pay Social Security benefits to younger workers.

But we're talking about the credit of the United States of America here. To suggest that the government will not honor that kind of commitment is absurd. This country has never defaulted on its debt and certainly would not on a matter of this importance. It's a bit like the now-debunked argument that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat. Only, this time we see through the deception.

FIGHTING TERROR WITH TORTURE

You wonder if the United States will ever have credibility again on human rights issues. I know awful things have been done in our name under other administrations, notably the Reagan administration, but the horrors perpetrated under the Bush regime are crimes against humanity. Take, for example, sending prisoners to the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, where prisoners have been boiled alive. This story by Don Van Natta Jr. is linked at www.commondreams.org:

Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.

The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask." Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly: "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights."

RIGHT-WINGERS FIND BIAS EVERYWHERE

There's a story in The New York Times now saying the chairman of PBS, a Republican, wants PBS to stop its "liberal" bias. Don't you get sick and tired of right-wing freaks seeing bias everywhere? PBS gets most of its funding from big corporations, just as the major media get their revenue from big corporations. Liberal bias, my Aunt Fanny. This story by STEPHEN LABATON, LORNE MANLY and ELIZABETH JENSEN is at www.nytimes.com:

The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

PAUL KRUGMAN EXAMINES BUSH SOCIAL SECURITY LIE

When the Bush administration names something you can bet it's the exact opposite of reality. "The Clean Skies" initiative is a giveaway to polluters. "Healthy Forests" gives loggers the freedom to chop down everything. It's the same with the "Social Security reform." It's not a Robin Hood plan; it's more like Al Capone. Paul Krugman takes a look in his column at www.nytimes.com:

Sure enough, a close look at President Bush's proposal for "progressive price indexing" of Social Security puts the lie to claims that it's a plan to increase benefits for the poor and cut them for the wealthy. In fact, it's a plan to slash middle-class benefits; the wealthy would barely feel a thing.

Under current law, low-wage workers receive Social Security benefits equal to 49 percent of their wages before retirement. Under the Bush scheme, that wouldn't change. So benefits for the poor would be maintained, not increased.

HOW WOULD YOU FEEL?

Right-wingers are good at demonizing people. They pick the enemy of the moment and begin a relentless campaign to dehumanize them. That's certainly been true of Iraq. We attacked Iraq, which didn't do anything to us. Now the soldiers there, who hate being there, take out their rage and frustration on the Iraqis. Their anger should be directed at the politicians who are responsible for their being there. Bob Herbert talks about some of the mundane atrocities that take place in Iraq in this column at www.nytimes.com:.

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "

MAY 1, 2005

THE CLOUDS ARE COMING!

An old sixties rock song says that "paranoia runs deep," and that's never been truer than with the Bush gang in power. George W. was moved to a bunker the other day because of a cloud. Someone thought the cloud was a threat to his Royal Highness. This story by Anthony Harwood is at www.mirror.co.uk:

PRESIDENT Bush went to his bomb-proof bunker and his deputy Dick Cheney was airlifted out of Washington as snipers took up positions.

An anti-aircraft missile battery was raised on a roof close to the White House while a Black Hawk helicopter was scrambled.

But the alarm was triggered by a freak cloud

RICHARD DAWKINS ON RELIGION

Richard Dawkins is one of the preeminent evolutionary biologists and authors in the world. He has some interesting ideas about our backward steps in the United States because of the influence of right-wing Christianity. This interview is at www.salon.com (once you get past the commercial):

There is just no evidence for the existence of God. Evolution by natural selection is a process that works up from simple beginnings, and simple beginnings are easy to explain. The engineer or any other living thing is difficult to explain -- but it is explicable by evolution by natural selection. So the relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe anywhere.

NORTH KOREA MAY HAVE NUCLEAR MISSILE TECHNOLOGY

While falsely claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and launching an immoral war there, the Bush administration has stood by while North Korea has apparently developed nuclear missile technology. The U.S. isn't saying that North Korea actually has missiles yet, but if they have the technology they could arm missiles that could threaten Japan and portions of the United States. This story by David S. Cloud and David E. Sanger is at www.nytimes.com:

The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said Thursday that American intelligence agencies believed North Korea had mastered the technology for arming its missiles with nuclear warheads, an assessment that if correct, means the North could build weapons to threaten Japan and perhaps the western United States.

While Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, the Defense Intelligence Agency chief, said in Senate testimony that North Korea had been judged to have the "capability" to put a nuclear weapon atop its missiles, he stopped well short of saying it had done so, or even that it had assembled warheads small enough for the purpose. Nor did he give evidence to back up his view during the public session of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

GROPER FOLLOWS IN THE BIGOT TRADITION

Racism and bigotry have been major tools of Republican politicians for some time. Richard Nixon used school bussing to integrate schools as a wedge issue. Ronald Reagan invoked mythical welfare queens (black women) to arouse his base against the poor and minorities. George H. W. Bush used the infamous Willie Horton ads to suggest that Michael Dukakis would allow these black predators out on the streets to rape and kill white women. Pete Wilson used illegal immigration of Mexicans across the California border. Now Governor Groper is following in Pete Wilson's tracks by praising the lunatics who call themselves Minutemen, those fat gun-toting vigilantes who supposedly are going to solve our illegal immigration problem. John Wildermuth and Mark Martin write about the Groper's attempt to fire up his bigoted base in this article at www.sfgate.com:

It was 11 years ago that Republican Pete Wilson rode public fears about illegal immigration into a second term as governor. Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is picking up where Wilson left off.

With polls showing Schwarzenegger's once gaudy approval ratings skidding below 50 percent, the governor is using the hot-button immigration issue to reconnect with conservative voters.

APRIL 30, 2005

ANOTHER BUSH ASSAULT ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

In his "news" conference George W. Bush says his "plan" for Social Security is essentially to cut benefits for the middle class and the affluent. Mr. Compassionate Conservative claims he wants to keep benefits intact for the poor. If you believe that, there's a bridge for sale somewhere. While he rams through enormous tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, Bush claims Social Security is "crisis" and only his grandiose plan for private accounts will save it. This commentary by Roger Hickey is at www.tompaine.com:

According to an analysis by House Democratic staff, when fully phased in, Bush’s “progressive indexing” would be a disaster for the middle class: A worker earning $37,000 per year before retirement would see a benefit cut of 28 percent. Someone earning $58,000 would suffer a 42 percent cut. And someone earning $90,000 would face benefit cuts of 49 percent.

Oddly, the president’s remarks included the repeated assurance that “future generations receive benefits equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get.” This sounds like a pledge to cut no one’s future benefits, echoing some in the Republican “free lunch” crowd. But smart journalists will force the White House to acknowledge that this is an empty and misleading promise. What the president described last night is entirely compatible with dramatic cuts in future benefits-which, under current law, are promised to increase substantially as wages and inflation go up. This is a bait and switch of the kind bloggers will be all over in their Friday postings.

BUSHWORLD: CROOKS AND LIARS RISE TO THE TOP

Ahmad Chalabi, who probably fed phony intelligence to the United States, is one of the men responsible for the horrendous and unjustified war against Iraq. Mr. Chalabi , a convicted embezzler, is the new oil minister in Iraq. In Bushworld you don't do the time for doing the crime; you get promoted to the top. Maureen Dowd writes about it at www.nytimes.com:

Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister.

Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?

PREEMPTIVE VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

George W. Bush claimed that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. He pushed the doctrine of "preemptive war," which is getting them before they get you. We've seen the folly of that doctrine in Iraq. Here at home Mr. Bush has been busy trashing the First Amendment. People get removed from Bush events because they "might" be disruptive. Democracy itself isn't a tidy process, and the First Amendment was put there by the Founders for a good reason. In this story it's revealed how the Bush crowd has consistently violated the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. The story by Ann Imse is at rockymountainnews.com:

The White House said Wednesday that simply a belief that someone intends to disrupt a presidential event is enough to get the person removed.

Addressing the ouster of three people from a presidential speech last month in Denver, Press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday, "If we think people are coming to the event to disrupt it, obviously, they're going to be asked to leave."

FRESNO'S MISERLY MAYOR AUTRY

Alan Autry, who played the role of Bubba in the TV series In the Heat of the Night, is a typical Republican. In a letter to the editor of The Fresno Bee Eli Setencich, a former journalist, points out that Bubba spent over $134.00 for a meal for two in Washington, D.C., and left the server a twenty-five cent tip. Way to go, Mr. Autry. It's just more dramatic evidence of the greed, stupidity, and arrogance of Republicans.

APRIL 29, 2005

MORE DARK ECONOMIC CLOUDS

In this article the sluggish economy is blamed on high energy prices. But we should note that it's only in the past few months that energy prices have taken off. The economy has been lousy since George W. Bush moved into the White House. It's no accident. Every time a Republican administration is in charge you can count on a bad economy. This administration is even worse than past administrations, of course. This administration wants to tear down the safety nets that have made it possible to ride out bad economic times. This article by Eduardo Porter is at www.nytimes.com:

The economy braked sharply in the first three months of the year, the government reported yesterday, expanding at its slowest pace in two years as rising energy prices spurred a burst of increased inflation and dragged down spending by businesses and consumers.

The Commerce Department estimated that the nation's gross domestic product grew at a 3.1 percent annual rate in the first quarter, substantially slower than the 3.8 percent growth of the final three months of 2004 and the slowest pace since the first quarter of 2003.

BOOK BURNERS IN ALABAMA

It seems that Alabama already has enough historical baggage to tote around. There was that little thing called slavery, then being a part of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and being on the wrong side in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Now an Alabama legislator wants to ban any work by a gay author or featuring gay characters. This guy even wants to ban work by Shakespeare! Let's hope this guy gets laughed and jeered right of politics. This story is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.

"I don't look at it as censorship," says State Representative Gerald Allen. "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

JUST A THOUGHT

Over the past several years right-wing Evangelicals have advanced the idea that they are being "persecuted." You know, people say "Happy holidays" and not "Merry Christmas" and that's persecution. Or Nativity scenes are banned on government property. Or evolution gets taught as science and "intelligent design" gets treated as mythology. I would have to say if this is persecution it's the most benign persecution I've ever seen.

But what really strikes me is that Jesus foretold his followers would be persecuted. If the right-wingers are being persecuted, doesn't that mean we're about to see the Second Coming? Isn't that what they want? Instead, we see the people crying "persecution" doing the persecuting.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S CROCODILE TEARS

The financial organ of the reactionary right in this country is The Wall Street Journal. The Journal rhapsodizes about the benefits of the "free market" and the horrors of regulation. It really has a problem with a progressive income system, trying consistently to make the argument that the very rich are overburdened by taxes while those of us in the lower income tax brackets aren't paying our fair share. The Journal is wrong. Jonathan Chait writes about it at www.latimes.com:

So how progressive, or confiscatory, is our tax system? Federal taxes are progressive. According to calculations by Citizens for Tax Justice, workers in the middle of the income scale pay about 16% of their income in federal taxes, while those in the top 1% pay about 25%. But that's offset in part by state and local taxes, which hit the poor and middle class much harder.

Taking into account all taxes, the top 1% pay around 33% of their income in taxes, while the bottom 99% pay 29.7% of their income in taxes. The rich pay somewhat higher tax rates, but not that much higher. (President Bush's tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the rich, narrowed that gap.)

OUR LOUSY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Right-wingers worship the free market. It doesn't matter how much evidence there is that the free market frequently doesn't work. The so-called "invisible hand" talked about by Adam Smith is too often a mailed fist. One very good example is our health care system, which is horrendously expensive and still leaves millions of Americans uninsured. Paul Krugman talks about the special interests and bloated private bureaucracy of the health care system at www.nytimes.com:

This week yet another report emphasized just how bad a job the American system does at providing basic health care. A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that 20 million working Americans are uninsured; in Texas, which has the worst record, more than 30 percent of the adults under 65 have no insurance.

And lack of insurance leads to inadequate medical attention. Over a 12-month period, 41 percent of the uninsured were unable to see a doctor when needed because of cost; 56 percent had no personal doctor or health care provider.

APRIL 28, 2005

DEFENSE CONTRACTORS LOVE BUSH

The growth industries under George W. Bush are defense and prisons. That's some legacy, isn't it? This article talks about how defense industry profits are way up thanks to Bush's unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article by Christian Plumb is at news.moneycentral.msn.com:

U.S. defense contractors reported strong quarterly earnings on Thursday as the Pentagon put billions into high tech military equipment and services.

Earnings soared 76 percent at Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC), 30 percent at Raytheon Co. (RTN) and 22 percent at Goodrich (GR). All three aerospace and defense companies beat analysts earnings forecasts, and they raised their earnings outlooks for the rest of the year.

After the news, shares of aircraft part maker Goodrich rose 6.4 percent, while Northrop Grumman stock was up 1.6 percent and Raytheon's shares were 1.9 percent higher.

IN BUSHWORLD THE INCOMPETENT GET REWARDED

The old Soviet Union had nothing on the Bush administration in whitewashing its crimes. Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer could have learned about whitewashing from this gang. In the various torture scandals it's the low level grunts who take the fall while their superiors, who probably ordered the torture, get to skate. Bob Herbert writes about it at www.nytimes.com:

When soldiers in war are not properly trained and supervised, atrocities are all but inevitable. This is one reason why the military command structure is so important. There was a time, not so long ago, when commanders were expected to be accountable for the behavior of their subordinates.

That's changed. Under Commander in Chief George W. Bush, the notion of command accountability has been discarded. In Mr. Bush's world of war, it's the grunts who take the heat. Punishment is reserved for the people at the bottom. The people who foul up at the top are promoted.

THE LOUSY ECONONIC NUMBERS FOR WORKING PEOPLE

You have to think a lot of people who support George W. Bush's economic policies must put their hands over their ears, close their eyes, and chant, "I do believe in Bush." The evidence that the working class is getting clobbered is overwhelming. Meanwhile, CEO salaries are way up, the income of the very richest is way up, and the rich even get other breaks by moving money offshore to dodge taxes. Molly Ivins has a good column at www.workingforchange.com:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a brand-new study out showing the uneven division of the fruits of the supposed economic recovery:

"The data show that the share of real income growth that has gone to wages and salaries has been smaller than during any other comparable post-World War II recovery period, while the share of real income growth that has gone to corporate profits has been larger than during all other comparable post-World War II recoveries."

In previous recoveries, workers got an average of 49 percent of the national income gains, while corporate profits got 18 percent. This time, the workers are getting 23 percent and the corporations are getting 44 percent -- about one half as much as the share that has gone to corporate profits.

THINGS BUSH IS NOT

In his "news" conference George W. Bush has mentioned that he's not an economist and that he's not a lawyer. Thanks for the bulletin, George. You're also not competent. But you are corrupt and a liar.

JUST SOME BUSH BOONDOGGLES

You have to wonder why the government spent $2.5 million for a new food pyramid, which is mostly the product of intensive lobbying by the food industry. All that money for a logo most people will ignore. Worse than that, though, is the waste of money and the incompetence in the Transportation Safety Administration. The TSA is made up of those wonderful folks who do strip searches in airports. This column by Margaret Carlson is at www.latimes.com:

According to the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, the TSA achieved in three years what it took the Pentagon decades to accomplish. The agency's multiple Sub-Zero refrigerators, $250,000 worth of art and a fitness center with towel service make the Pentagon's fabled $600 toilet seat look like a blue-light special at Kmart.

APRIL 27, 2005

OUR INCREDIBLY UNEQUAL SOCIETY

If you bring up taxes around conservatives, suggesting that maybe a progressive tax system is the most just, they'll get all sanctimonious and condescending and tell you that the very richest already pay most of the income taxes. What they don't mention is that as a proportion of income the very rich are being under taxed relative to the rest of us. The taxes of the very rich have gone down significantly over the past two decades, while their incomes have tripled. This column by Kevin Drum is at www.washingtonmonthly.com:

I see that the Wall Street Journal is busily cementing its reputation as the most dishonest editorial page in the country. Today they crow yet again about the vast tax burden of the upper classes:

An IRS study by a trio of tax wonks shows that, even after including Social Security taxes, the overall tax burden grew more progressive from 1979 to 1999. And while that burden became a tad less progressive after the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, the rich and upper middle class continued to pay far and away the bulk of U.S. taxes.

Now, it's true that the rich and the upper middle class pay the bulk of U.S. taxes. But you know why? It's because the rich and the upper class also have the bulk of the money: the top 20% of taxpayers pay 67% of federal taxes, but they also earn 60% of all income.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT IS A WALL AGAINST RELIGIOUS WAR

Evangelicals like to claim that we're a Christian country, but just a little research shows we're a product of the Enlightenment. The move by the Christian right to turn our country into a theocracy would take us back to the bad old days before the Enlightenment when countries warred constantly because of religion. People were killed as "heretics" for not believing the right way. Science and knowledge were suppressed when they didn't agree with someone's interpretation of holy writ. Robert Kuttner has some thoughts at www.boston.com:

What's under siege here is nothing less than the Enlightenment. Please recall that what we benignly remember as the Renaissance coexisted with centuries of vicious religious persecution -- Christians persecuting heretics like Galileo, expelling and slaughtering Muslims and Jews, then doing bloody battle with each other following the Protestant Reformation.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment were men of science who understood that faith could not be disputed but that reason could be subjected to the test of logic and evidence. The American Revolution was a triple triumph -- for political democracy, religious tolerance, and for the free inquiry demanded by the scientific method.

THE PETROLEUM AGE IS OVER

It's time to face the reality that the age of cheap oil is over. It's also time to begin our transition to a new society based on alternative energy sources. That's not only because oil is going to become scarcer and more expensive, but because the very health of the planet depends upon it. Americans have been the biggest consumers of oil on the planet, so our lifestyle is going to be impacted the most. I'm an optimist. I think we can have a good quality of life without oil. This story by Floyd J. McKay is at www.commondreams.org:

In the long run, the declining supply of fossil fuel is a greater threat to American life as we have known it in the past century than is global terrorism.

If oil production peaks and begins a long downward slide, that will have a profound effect on our domestic and industrial life. Our economy is based on cheap oil, our communities are built around automobiles and we lack the backup transportation and industrial fuels needed to maintain our lifestyle.

America is the only industrialized nation without a functioning passenger-rail system, and we are cutting back intercity bus routes. We have systematically ignored alternative forms of energy, such as solar and wind, relegating research in these areas to the fringes while we build ever-bigger automobiles with ever-larger fuel demands.

STATISTICS ABOUT GROWTH ARE MISLEADING

I think it was Mark Twain who talked about lies, damned lies, and statistics. Statistics, artfully manipulated, can support almost any position. Take, for example, the rhetoric you hear about "growth" in the U.S. economy. As this article points out, we should use the standard of prosperity, which measures the well-being of the majority of us, not just the few at the top who benefit from growth. This article by Joshua Holland is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The self-serving politics of growth has grown ever more dominant since the emergence of the new conservative movement under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, creating a lopsided system that increasingly serves the greed of the few at the expense of the well-being of the many. According to Ed Wolff, author of Top Heavy, the share of national wealth controlled by the top 1 percent of households increased from 20.5 percent in 1979 to 38.5 percent in 1998, while the bottom 40 percent of American households experienced a drop in their share of national net worth, from 0.9 percent in 1983 to only 0.2 percent in 1998.

APRIL 26, 2005

AMERICANS LEERY OF REPUBLICAN AGENDA

I wonder why it took so long, but polls show Americans are becoming increasingly skeptical of some major items on the GOP agenda, including abolishing the filibuster in the Senate and privatizing Social Security. This story by Richard Morin and Dan Balz is from www.washingtonpost.com:

As the Senate moves toward a major confrontation over judicial appointments, a strong majority of Americans oppose changing the rules to make it easier for Republican leaders to win confirmation of President Bush's court nominees, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

GOP leaders are threatening a rule change to prohibit the use of filibusters to block judicial nominees and have stepped up their criticism of the Democrats for using the tactic on some of Bush's nominees to the federal appellate courts. They say they are prepared to invoke what has become known as the "nuclear option" to ensure that Bush's nominees receive an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

WHY IS QUESTIONING RELIGION SO TERRIBLE?

I've never seen water turned into wine, or an ocean parted, or a virgin birth, or someone raised from the dead. Yet I'm supposed to accept those and other accounts from religion as miracles that happened long ago and proof there is a Supreme Being watching over us all. I have no problem with people who believe in religion as long as they don't try to turn our secular society into a society governed by religious law. I have absolutely no desire to live in a theocracy. Mike Whitney writes about some of the issues surrounding religion in this article at www.smirkingchimp.com:

There's simple rule for atheists and agnostics in America; keep your head down and your mouth shut.

I recently wrote an article for Counterpunch web site criticizing the new pope and organized religion. Boy, did the brickbats start to fly. Many were put off by my assessment of the pope as right-wing extremist who will undoubtedly lead the papal caravan back to the 13th century. More were offended by my dismissive remarks about religion.

DEBUNKING THE RIGHT-WING EVANGELICALS

You hear it repeated over and over again by the right-wingers: The United States is a Christian nation and the Founders were Christians. The Constitution is based on the Ten Commandments and on Judeo-Christian beliefs. It's absolute nonsense. Our country was founded as a secular nation, and the Founders took great pains to keep church and state separate. Thom Hartmann has an interesting article linked at www.commondreams.org:

In fact, Jefferson said, the idea that this nation was founded in Christianity, or that the Ten Commandments were a pattern for the Constitution, was a "fraud of the clergy."

"Christianity was not introduced [to England] till the seventh century," wrote Jefferson in a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, "the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it. ...

"In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are."

NOT THE KIND OF GROWTH WE WANT

Here in the Central Valley prisons are big business. We have a prison in Chowchilla and a prison in Corcoran that houses some of the worst criminals in the nation. Prisons are a growth industry in the United States, and I think you have to ask why. Are Americans more inherently disposed to commit crime, or are lots of people being imprisoned who shouldn't be? This article by Alan Eisner is at today.reuters.com:

The U.S. penal system, the world's largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004, the Department of Justice reported on Sunday.

The latest official half-yearly figures found the nation's prison and jail population at 2,131,180 in the middle of last year, an increase of 2.3 percent over 2003.

The United States has incarcerated 726 people per 100,000 of its population, seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies. The rate for England is 142 per 100,000, for France 91 and for Japan 58.